


one breath, it'll just break it

by piggy09



Category: We Know the Devil (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-23 00:00:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11977851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: “So,” Neptune says. “How are the nightmares.”Do you ever think about how dark the closet was, Jupiter thinks.Like holding your head underwater and never needing or wanting to breathe.Sometimes I dream I touch you, Jupiter thinks.“They’re – fine,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ear and then immediately pulling it back out. “I don’t know. I don’t remember them much, ha.”(Oh, Neptune had breathed into the skin of Jupiter’s neck, like she was surprised.Oh, oh, oh.)





	one breath, it'll just break it

**Author's Note:**

> I meant to leave this ambiguous but I think it probably did end up taking place after Venus' ending, if only because Venus isn't there. It could take place after any ending, though.
> 
> [warnings: mild self-harm]

When Jupiter gets to the Starbucks Neptune is already sitting at a table, back to the window, thumbs flying over the screen of her phone. She isn’t even texting anyone; she’s just playing Flappy Bird, and Jupiter can vividly imagine the way she’s muttering _fuck_ at her phone every time she misses a pipe, and she opens the door to the Starbucks completely and totally aware of the hair tie around her wrist. It’s fine, though. She’s fine. She’s alright. She pushes the door open and waves at Neptune as she walks in, gestures to the counter. Neptune does a complicated eyebrow wiggle that is Neptune-speak for _hurry up, oh my god_ , and Jupiter just grins at her before heading up to order.

One bright pink strawberry smoothie later, she is sitting at the table across from the girl who – um. Well. Neptune is wearing a shirt with a neck low enough to bare the lines of her collarbones; they look like wishbones, there for breaking. One of them is obscured by the fall of hair over her shoulder. Jupiter snaps her hair tie against her wrist.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey yourself,” says Neptune wryly, tapping away and completely ignoring her cup. It has way too many boxes checked off on the side. Jupiter can’t help smiling at it. At the cup. Then Neptune sees her looking at it – the cup – and Jupiter ducks her head down to take a drink from her smoothie.

“I like your hair,” she mutters into her smoothie straw. She does. It’s blue at the edges, now, blue like drowning.

“Needed a change,” Neptune says, and – in a gesture that punches Jupiter in the stomach with a sort of giddy shock – puts her phone on the table next to her. Rests her elbows on the table and steeples her hands in front of her. “So,” she says. “How are the nightmares.”

Jupiter flinches, slaps her smoothie down against the table. Her leg is starting to jitter-hop nervously and her wrist still stings and she’s _fine_ , she’s alright, she’s completely and totally fine. “Nightmares?” she asks shakily.

“Fuck yeah, nightmares,” Neptune says, all brassy bravado, eyes skittering nervously to Jupiter’s and then away again. “You know, bad dreams. Don’t tell me you don’t get those, because that would be a really obvious lie and I would have to call you out on it and honestly, Jupiter, I would win that argument. I would win it so hard your head would spin.”

 _Do you ever think about how dark the closet was,_ Jupiter thinks. _Like holding your head underwater and never needing or wanting to breathe._

 _Sometimes I dream I touch you_ , Jupiter thinks.

“They’re – fine,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ear and then immediately pulling it back out. “I don’t know. I don’t remember them much, ha.”

( _Oh,_ Neptune had breathed into the skin of Jupiter’s neck, like she was surprised. _Oh, oh, oh._ )

“Really?” Neptune says. “Because I remember – _every_ – second.” She meets Jupiter’s eyes, like a challenge. She is _right there_ , and Jupiter could – reach out and touch the skin of Neptune’s wrist, she could wrap Neptune’s hair around her throat and pull, she could do something really stupid like kiss her. _Snap_ goes the hair tie and Jupiter is fine.

“I don’t,” she says hoarsely. Lets herself laugh, shaky and raw, and says, “You know, I can’t remember so much of that summer. Ahaha.”

(It’s a lie.)

(It’s not a lie.)

She looks at her cup. The barista spelled her name perfectly. She wasn’t sure why she was expecting them to mess it up, or why she’s upset that they didn’t. She can feel Neptune looking at her. She doesn’t want to look up. She doesn’t want to see her look disappointed.

“Do you remember the devil,” Neptune says.

“Yes,” says Jupiter. It’s not a lie. Not really. But it is: she’s not thinking about the devil, she’s thinking of the day the three of them went down to the lake and the way Venus laughed, like a bright bell. The summer-faded ends of Neptune’s hair. The pleasant ache in Jupiter’s legs, from running. The smell of the air – like the whole world holding its breath and waiting for a fire.

“I don’t,” Neptune says, and her voice is soft. Jupiter looks up, startled. Across the table Neptune is staring at her own cup; she’s holding it so tightly that the cardboard of it is starting to dent with the pressure of her fingers. The honey-sweet voice in the back of Jupiter’s head that is always, always there says: _take her hands in yours_. But Jupiter is good, and she doesn’t.

“I don’t remember,” Neptune says again. “I keep trying to, but I—” and she stops, looks horribly disgusted with herself. For Neptune this must be Sisyphean, this telling. Jupiter’s heart aches. Jupiter’s wrist stings. Jupiter’s mouth tastes like artificial strawberry, too sweet and pink to be real.

 _The devil looked like the pieces of you I saw in the dark,_ she thinks. Or maybe: _the devil looked like the sun, felt like the sun, too bright and warm to be held_. Or maybe: _the devil was everything familiar. Everything you’ve ever loved about yourself. Everything you’ve ever hated._

“Maybe that’s better,” she says. Her voice is trembling, just a little, around the edges. One week into camp they had smuggled a list of campfire songs away from the fire, burned it with a lighter they’d stolen from Group North. It went up at the edges, first, so soft it almost didn’t seem real. The fire had lit up Neptune’s face; she’d smirked at Jupiter like she’d known every bad thing in the world and had caused more than a few of them. Jupiter hadn’t been able to look at her for long. She’d looked at the fire instead.

(In the light of the small flame Venus just looked beautifully, horribly sad. Jupiter didn’t know what she looked like. Didn’t want to know.)

“It’s not,” Neptune says. “You know it’s not.”

“I know,” Jupiter whispers. She can feel the beginnings of tears in her eyes, rubs them away angrily. “Neptune?”

“Mm.”

“How are _your_ nightmares?”

The air is silent – well, no, not really. There’s dishes clattering, people laughing, the world spinning all around them. But: no sirens. May as well be silent, right? May as well have no noise at all.

Neptune finally looks up from her cup, shrugs a shoulder in a gesture too loose and sad to be hers. “I wake up and I need to vomit,” she says casually, “but I don’t. I just lie there in the dark and try to remember how to breathe without feeling like I’m drowning.”

She swallows, once, looks down and up again. “It’s not dark in my nightmares,” she says, and her voice is too soft to be Neptune’s, too gentle, so gentle it makes Jupiter want to get up and run and run until she’s covered the entire world with her footprints. “It’s only dark when I wake up. In my bad dreams it’s all white light.”

 _Sometimes my nightmares are dark,_ Jupiter thinks.

 _I want to touch you so bad,_ Jupiter thinks.

(So _bad_.)

(Bad bad bad bad bad.)

But Neptune is still watching her, eyes dark like the worlds behind closed doors. Jupiter’s wrist doesn’t sting anymore, and she hates it for that. She hates herself for not hurting right, or maybe she hates herself for wanting to hurt, or maybe she hates herself for the way her eyes keep sticking on all the different parts of Neptune that are beautiful.

Snap.

“Well when you wake up I’m sure it’s better,” Jupiter mutters, lips clumsy, “’cause it’s dark.” She drinks more smoothie.

“Sometimes things are easier that way,” Neptune says. “If you can’t see anything. You know?” Jupiter watches Neptune’s fingers pressing down the lid of her cup, around and around. Neptune’s fingers. Neptune’s hands. She watches Neptune’s hands. Neptune is right: this would be easier if Jupiter couldn’t see anything. Jupiter closes her eyes and the world is reduced to the strawberry dark. She opens her eyes and Neptune is staring at her like she’s a freak, which is understandable.

“Yeah,” Jupiter says, “yeah, totally, the dark. Haha. I get it.”

“You were always good at getting shit,” Neptune says, on the knife’s edge of casual. “Which is funny, considering.”

“Considering what?”

“You know,” Neptune says. “You.”

“I don’t,” Jupiter says. Her mouth is dry. She drinks more smoothie; it doesn’t help. _Hey Neptune_ , she imagines saying, _what happens when you can’t see anything through all the hands in the air that could be your hands reaching? Just, haha, wondering, what do you do when you want to reach out and grab the whole world? Do you know what you’d want to do with it? Just wondering. I really do like your hair._

“I really don’t know me,” she says. “But, uh. You do! I guess. Nothing helps you get to know someone like being locked in a cabin with them for an entire night.”

“A night? You sure? Felt like thirty years.” Neptune takes the bait more gracefully than Jupiter expected her to; she sort of wanted Neptune to fight for it, whatever it is the two of them almost just fought for.

“Like I said,” Jupiter says, “I don’t really remember. Just – the bugs. The sirens. The face Venus made when we drank that really shitty alcohol. Uh. That’s about it.”

“That’s it.”

“That’s it!” Jupiter says. She watches her own terrible hands on the table. She watches the dregs of her smoothie. She remembers the devil, unless she doesn’t. She isn’t paying any attention to whatever feeling Neptune is sending her, like tendrils of seaweed wrapping around your ankles when you walk into the water to drown. She isn’t thinking about her own hands touching Neptune, snap. She doesn’t really remember that. If that happened. Which it didn’t. It didn’t, it couldn’t, it – Jupiter drinks more smoothie, and in the back of her brain – in the dark – Neptune says _oh_ so quiet and soft and beautiful.

“Wow,” Neptune says. “Yeah. That’s just about it, isn’t it.”

“I’m sorry,” Jupiter says. She looks up at Neptune, finally, she drowns. “Neptune I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“For what?” Neptune says, flicking her hair over her shoulder. “Not remembering? You’ve just got early-onset Alzheimer’s, whatever, at least you finally have a character flaw.”

“Ahaha,” Jupiter says, because what else could she do. She could reach across the table and take Neptune’s hands, because they look like they’d be warm. Alternatively she could do literally anything else.

Neptune, caught up in her own momentum, doesn’t even seem to need a response from Jupiter. She is checking her phone. She is texting someone. “Well,” she says, “as much as I love reliving our trauma summer—”

“What?”

Neptune looks up. “You know,” she says. “Bugs. Heat. The literal devil.”

“Oh,” Jupiter says weakly. “Yeah. Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt, sorry.”

Neptune studies her. “You’re fine,” she says, voice unexpectedly soft. “Look. This was good. Or it wasn’t, it was actually sort of shitty, but I missed your face and I want to see it again. Let’s do this again. Okay? Don’t say no, you literally aren’t allowed.”

“Oh,” Jupiter says. “I also want to see your face. So. Yeah. Let’s do this again.”

“Great,” Neptune says. “I’ll text you.”

“Do you know how to do that?” Jupiter says. Neptune stares at her for one endless blank moment before she gets it, and smiles. Beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful, Jupiter could look at it forever, Jupiter could touch it with every one of her fingers.

“You’re funny,” she says. “Cut that shit out, it’s confusing.” She stands up and for a second her hands hang in the air like she doesn’t know what to do with them and every bit of breath in Jupiter’s body seizes and holds

and then Neptune’s hands are just Neptune’s hands again, and she is putting her phone in her pocket. “Bye,” she says, and makes her way out the door like someone is rolling out a red carpet for her and she doesn’t want to miss the end of it. Then she’s gone – just Jupiter, an empty smoothie cup, and Neptune’s cup of – whatever.

Jupiter picks up her own cup to throw it away and then grabs Neptune’s, on a whim. Something in it sloshes. Oh. She didn’t drink it. She didn’t even touch it. She ordered her drink and she didn’t even touch it a little bit.

Jupiter puts the cup back down on the table and takes her own empty cup to the trash can. She throws it out. She stuffs her awful hands into the pockets of her shirt, and she walks out the door.

**Author's Note:**

> Tales of an endless night  
> Cursed is the fool who's willing  
> Can't change the way we are  
> One kiss away from killing
> 
> Don't you say, don't you say it  
> Don't say, don't you say it  
> One breath, it'll just break it  
> So shut your mouth and run me like a river
> 
> Shut your mouth, baby, stand and deliver  
> Holy hands, oh, they make me a sinner  
> Like a river, like a river  
> Shut your mouth and run me like a river  
> \--"River," Bishop Briggs
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


End file.
